The US Department of Commerce is in the process of increasing the stranglehold in tech exports directed to Chinese shores. The move is being made through the delivery of letters to US-based technology companies - namely KLA Corp, Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. - ordering them to stop the export of machines and equipment that can be used for sub-14 nm manufacturing. The move by the Department of Commerce only has validity for the companies that have been served by such a letter - at least until the Department codifies its newest regulations.

This means that only sellers with approved export licenses can keep doing business with Beijing, thus limiting the US companies China can work with as it aims to achieve at least a degree of self-sufficiency in the latest chipmaking tech. Perhaps the decision has come too late, however, as China's mainstay silicon manufacturing, SMIC, already manufactures chips at the 14 nm process (chips that have been deployed in China's Tinahu Light supercomputer already) and has even showcased manufacturing capability in the 7 nm field. It pays to remember that the US already had applied similar restrictions on equipment experts to China for the better part of two years - which apparently did little to stem China's capability to create increasingly denser semiconductor designs.

According to the latest TrendForce statistics, revenue of the top ten global IC design houses reached US$39.56 billion in 2Q22, growing 32% YoY. Growth was primarily driven by demand for data centers, networking, IoT, and high-end product portfolios. AMD achieved synergy through mergers and acquisitions. In addition to climbing to third place, the company also posted the highest annual revenue growth rate in 2Q22 at 70%.

Qualcomm continues in the No. 1 position worldwide, exhibiting growth in the mobile phone, RF front-end, automotive, and IoT sectors. Sales of mid/low-end mobile phone APs were weak but demand for high-end mobile phone APs was relatively stable. Company revenue reached US$9.38 billion, or 45% growth YoY. NVIDIA benefitted from expanded application of GPUs in data centers to expand this product category's revenue share past the 50% mark to 53.5%, making up for the 13% YoY slump in its game application business, bringing total revenue to US$7.09 billion, though annual growth rate slowed to 21%. AMD reorganized its business after the addition of Xilinx and Pensando. The company's embedded division revenue increased by 2,228% YoY. In addition, its data center department also made a considerable contribution. AMD posted revenue of US$6.55 billion, achieving 70% growth YoY, highest amongst the top ten. Broadcom's sales performance in semiconductor solutions remained solid and demand for cloud services, data centers, and networking is quite strong. The company's purchase order backlog is still increasing with 2Q22 revenue reaching US$6.49 billion, an annual growth rate of 31%.

According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.

As the market leader, Samsung has grown its enterprise SSD revenue to US$3.26 billion with the recovery of enterprise SSD procurement. Especially in the second quarter, when orders for other consumer products continued to decline, enterprise SSD became the company's outlet for reducing production capacity. At present, Samsung has been continuously investing in the development of next-generation transmission specification products such as the CXL 2.0 product released at the Flash Summit in early August, in order to maintain a leading position in the market.

ASUS today announced the MA-25 Coax-to-Ethernet MoCA Adapter, a device that uses pre-existing coaxial wiring in the home to provide wired and wireless internet connections that are fast, stable and protected. The adapter enables wiring normally set aside for cable TV to be leveraged to build a fast and reliable MoCA network in locations with thick walls and multiple floors that may affect the performance of a purely wireless network.

With the MA-25, users can enjoy up to 2.5 Gbps wired backhaul connections, with an easy band-mode switch to avoid signal interference with DOCSIS 3.1 cable modems. The MoCA Protected Setup (MPS) feature lets users securely add devices to the network with the press of one button, similarly to how WPS is used with wireless networks. Gamers may also find that a MoCA network delivers reduced latency, faster downloads and fewer lag spikes.

The Chinese technology giant, SMIC, has managed to advance its semiconductor manufacturing technology and shipped the first 7 nm silicon manufactured on China's soil. According to analyst firm TechInsights, who examined the 7 nm Bitcoin mining SoC made for MinerVa firm, there are doubts that SMIC 7 nm process is somewhat similar to TSMC's 7 nm process. Despite having no access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing tools, and US restrictions placed around it, SMIC has managed to produce what resembles an almost perfect 7 nm node. This could lead to a true 7 nm logic and memory bitcells sometimes in the future, as the node advances in SMIC's labs.

Having done an in-depth die analysis, the TechInsights report indicates that TSMC, Intel, and Samsung have a more advanced 7 nm node and are two nodes ahead of the Chinese SMIC. The results are not great regarding the economics and yield of this SMIC 7 nm process. While we have no specific data, the report indicates that the actual working chips made with older DUV tools are not perfect. This is not a problem for the Chinese market as it seeks independence from Western companies and technology. However, introducing a China-made 7 nm chip is more critical as it shows that the country can manufacture advanced nodes with restrictions and sanctions in place. The MinerVa SoC die and the PCB that houses those chips are pictured below.

Today ASML Holding NV (ASML) has published its 2022 second-quarter results. Q2 net sales of €5.4 billion, gross margin of 49.1%, net income of €1.4 billion. Record quarterly net bookings in Q2 of €8.5 billion. ASML expects Q3 2022 net sales between €5.1 billion and €5.4 billion and a gross margin between 49% and 50%. Expected sales growth for the full year of around 10%.

The value of fast shipments*in 2022 leading to delayed revenue recognition into 2023 is expected to increase from around €1 billion to around €2.8 billion.
"Our second-quarter net sales came in at €5.4 billion with a gross margin of 49.1%. Demand from our customers remains very strong, as reflected by record net bookings in the second quarter of €8.5 billion, including €5.4 billion from 0.33 NA and 0.55 NA EUV systems as well as strong DUV bookings.

The recent semiconductor shortage has put an unprecedented amount of focus on the industry. Both commercial and government entities have come to recognize the lack of advanced node semiconductor manufacturing capabilities onshore in the United States. Intel Foundry Services (IFS) entry into the commercial foundry space is poised to change all that. As part of IFS Accelerator program, Intel recently announced their new IFS Cloud Alliance program, with Microsoft Azure as one of the inaugural members.

This is the latest chapter in a partnership between Intel and Microsoft that stretches back decades all the way back to the early days of the personal computer. In the last few years, Intel and Microsoft have collaborated on advancing semiconductor design on the cloud by working together to bring out EDA centric cloud compute such as the FX series on Azure, working with EDA vendors to enhance their software to better take advantage of the elasticity of the Azure cloud, as well as collaborating on a secure cloud-based semiconductor development platform for the US Department of Defense RAMP and RAMP-C programs.

Worldwide shipments of traditional PCs declined 15.3% year over year to 71.3 million units in the second quarter of 2022 (2Q22), according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. This was the second consecutive quarter of lower shipments following two years of growth. The decline was worse than expected as supply and logistics further deteriorated due to the lockdowns in China and persistent macroeconomic headwinds.

"Fears over a recession continue to mount and weaken demand across segments," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobile Device trackers. "Consumer demand for PCs has weakened in the near term and is at risk of perishing in the long term as consumers become more cautious about their spending and once again grow accustomed to computing across device types such as phones and tablets. Meanwhile, commercial demand has been more robust although it has also declined as businesses delay purchases."

ASML is one of the critical semiconductors companies, as they provide tools for making actual silicon. Located in the Netherlands, they are famous for their DUV and EUV lithography tools, used to etch designs onto silicon wafers. According to the report from Bloomberg, the United States governing body is negotiating with the Dutch government to restrict the export of ASML's products to China. This came to affection following US Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves's visit to the Netherlands to discuss supply chain issues and meeting with ASML Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink. While these suggested export restrictions could be beneficial to the strategic placement of US against China, it would hurt ASML's revenue as sales in China accounted for a 16% share of the company's revenue in 2021.

It is recorded that the Chinese spending spree on tools has been the greatest among every country, lasting for two years in a row. By banning ASML from exporting its lithography tools to China, the US could theoretically halt Chinese plans for achieving the government's intended semiconductor independence. The talks with the Dutch government and ASML are still a work in progress, so we are yet to see if the deal is finalized. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that the major US semiconductor manufacturing tool makers like Applied Materials and Lam Research are already banned from exporting to China.

The Exascale supercomputing race is now well underway, as the US-based Frontier supercomputer got delivered, and now we wait to see the remaining systems join the race. Today, during 79th HPC User Forum at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Terri Quinn at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) delivered a few insights into what El Capitan exascale machine will look like. And it seems like the new powerhouse will be based on AMD's Instinct MI300 APU. LLNL targets peak performance of over two exaFLOPs and a sustained performance of more than one exaFLOP, under 40 megawatts of power. This should require a very dense and efficient computing solution, just like the MI300 APU is.

As a reminder, the AMD Instinct MI300 is an APU that combines Zen 4 x86-64 CPU cores, CDNA3 compute-oriented graphics, large cache structures, and HBM memory used as DRAM on a single package. This is achieved using a multi-chip module design with 2.5D and 3D chiplet integration using Infinity architecture. The system will essentially utilize thousands of these APUs to become one large Linux cluster. It is slated for installation in 2023, with an operating lifespan from 2024 to 2030.

After the EU lawmakers agreed on making USB Type-C the charging interface standard for the union, it appears US senators are considering something similar. Although it's early days at this point, with just a letter penned by a few democratic senators to the Secretary of Commerce, the route to implementation is likely to be a lot longer. The reasoning is very similar to the one from the EU lawmakers, namely to reduce e-waste and make life easier for consumers. The letter states that "the average consumer owns approximately three mobile phone chargers, and around 40 percent of consumers report that, on at least one occasion, they "could not charge their mobile phone because available chargers were incompatible.""

It goes on to say that innovation should benefit consumers rather than come at their expense, especially as consumers end up with a collection of incompatible chargers and connectivity cables. In reality things are a bit more complex, as so often is the case, but there's really no reason why more standardised chargers can't finally become the norm, with the computer and mobile industries largely pushing for USB Type-C as the common connector, with some exceptions. The extra incentive by regulation should help speed things up, but the USB standard isn't as straightforward as the politicians seem to think, which could cause some consumer complaints during the transition period. However, certified USB PD compliant devices should make everyone's life simpler in the long term. Time will tell if the Secretary of Commerce agrees with the senators and there's obviously no guarantee that USB Type-C will be the chosen standard, regardless of how likely it is.

Based on a report by the Nikkei, Japan and the US have joined forces to speed up the development of semiconductor production at 2 nm nodes in Japan by 2025. It's not exactly clear how this is going to happen, but the two nations are said to have signed a bilateral chip technology partnership. The heavy lifting is said to be done by private companies from both nations, but in terms of research and actual chip production. Part of the reason for the move, is that Japan wants to be able to manufacture cutting edge ICs domestically for next-generation chips.

The research is said to be kicking off as soon as this summer, although no decisions have been made with regards to the manufacturing structure, with the Nikkei suggesting two alternatives, based on information from the Japanese Ministry of Economy. There will either be a joint partnership between Japanese and US businesses, or it could be a wholly Japanese owned setup. It appears that one major reason for this project is the production of ICs for the Japanese defence industry, as advanced electronics are needed in a lot of related products, ranging from fighter jets and missiles, to radar systems and communication systems. However, the article also suggests that the 2 nm node is suitable for everything from components for quantum computers to smartphones. Japan already makes advanced silicon wafers and many other parts and components used in semiconductor manufacturing, but the nation has fallen behind in the actual manufacturing of leading edge semiconductors over the past few years.

Global fab equipment spending for front-end facilities is expected to increase 20% year-over-year (YOY) to an all-time high of US$109 billion in 2022, marking a third consecutive year of growth following a 42% surge in 2021, SEMI announced today in its latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report. Fab equipment investment in 2023 is expected to remain strong.

"The global semiconductor equipment industry remains on track to cross the $100 billion threshold for the first time as shown in our latest update of the World Fab Forecast,"said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. "This historic milestone puts an exclamation point on the current run of unprecedented industry growth."

In 2021 TSMC saw an increase in sales of 24.9 percent in monetary value, but for 2022, the company is expecting this figure to reach somewhere around the 30 percent mark. For this quarter alone, TSMC is expecting a revenue of somewhere between US$17.6 to US$18.2 billion, with a gross margin ending up as high as 58 percent. Despite the positive outlook, TSMC hasn't been doing well on the Taiwanese stock exchange this year, as the company has lost more than a tenth of its value in 2022.

That said, TSMC is pressing forward and will still be spending in excess of US$40 billion in 2023 to expand its production capacity, following the US$40 to US$44 billion it will invest this year. The company isn't overly concerned about inflation at this point in time either, saying it doesn't have a direct impact on the semiconductor industry. TSMC is seeing a slowdown in the consumer chip space, but it's seeing an uptick in business when it comes to EV related ICs. TSMC's production lines are at full utilisation for at least the rest of 2022, but most likely long into 2023.

As the world comes to grips with chip shortages due to supply chain disruptions and ripple-effects from the global pandemic, Intel's leaders are urging Congress to fund the CHIPS for America Act to create a more stable future for the U.S. tech industry.

In 1990, 80% of the world's semiconductors were produced in the U.S. and Europe. Today, 80% are produced in Asia, where countries provide substantial incentives to domestic semiconductor industries. This helps create a 30% to 50% cost disadvantage for companies that produce semiconductors in the U.S.
Increasing manufacturing in both the U.S. and the European Union is key to helping rebalance the global supply of chips. In February, EU President Ursula von der Leyen announced the European Chips Act, with the goal of doubling the EU's global semiconductor manufacturing share to 20% by 2030. It also provides for more R&D investments in disruptive technologies, supports small business and startups by attracting new talent to Europe for them, and focuses on building partnerships with like-minded countries to strengthen interdependencies.

According to TrendForce research, as manufacturers actively shifted production capacity to 128 layer products, the market turned to oversupply, resulting in a drop in contract prices in 1Q22, among which the decline in consumer-grade products was more pronounced. Although enterprise SSD purchase order volume has grown, demand for smart phone bits has weakened due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the traditional off-season, and rising inflation. Client inventories have increased significantly, so it remains challenging for overall bit shipment volume to offset potential decline. In 1Q22, NAND Flash bit shipments and average selling prices fell by 0.5% and 2.3%, respectively, resulting in a 3.0% quarterly decrease in overall industry revenue to US$17.92 billion.

Although China's smartphone stocking momentum was marginally weak considering the off-season, due to sluggish supply on the part of Kioxia and WDC, Samsung's 1Q22 client SSD shipment bit growth was driven up by an influx of rush orders and North American enterprise SSD client orders also recovered significantly in March. Overall bit shipments increased by 9% QoQ and ASP decreased by 2% QoQ. In 1Q22, the NAND Flash portion of Samsung's electronics business posted revenue of US$6.32 billion, up 3.4% QoQ.

MaxLinear, Inc. a leading provider of radio frequency (RF), analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for broadband, connectivity, and infrastructure markets, and Silicon Motion, a global leader in NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices, announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which MaxLinear will acquire Silicon Motion in a cash and stock transaction that values the combined company at $8 billion in enterprise value. In the merger, each American Depositary Share (ADS) of Silicon Motion, which represents four ordinary shares of Silicon Motion, will receive $93.54 in cash and 0.388 shares of MaxLinear common stock, for total per ADS consideration of $114.34 (based on MaxLinear's May 4, 2022 closing price). The strategic business combination is anticipated to drive transformational scale, create a diversified technology portfolio, significantly expand the combined company's total addressable market, and create a highly profitable cash generating semiconductor leader.

Upon completion of the acquisition, the combined company will have a highly diversified technology platform with strong positions across the broadband, connectivity, infrastructure, and storage end markets. The combination of MaxLinear's RF, analog/mixed-signal, and processing capabilities with Silicon Motion's market leading NAND flash controller technology completes a total technology stack which fully captures end-to-end platform functionality and accelerates the company's expansion into enterprise, consumer, and many other adjacent growth markets. Combined revenues are expected to be more than $2 billion annually and are supported by the technology breadth to address a total market opportunity of roughly $15 billion.

Global shipments of traditional PCs, including desktops, notebooks, and workstations, declined 5.1% in the first quarter of 2022 (1Q22) but exceeded earlier forecasts, according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. The PC market is coming off two years of double-digit growth, so while the first quarter decline is a change in this momentum, it doesn't mean the industry is in a downward spiral. Despite ongoing supply chain and logistical challenges, vendors still shipped 80.5 million PCs during the quarter. The 1Q22 volume marks the seventh consecutive quarter where global shipments surpassed 80 million, a feat not seen since 2012.

"The focus shouldn't be on the year-over-year decline in PC volumes because that was to be expected. The focus should be on the PC industry managing to ship more than 80 million PCs at a time when logistics and supply chain are still a mess, accompanied by numerous geopolitical and pandemic-related challenges," said Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "We have witnessed some slowdown in both the education and consumer markets, but all indicators show demand for commercial PCs remains very strong. We also believe that the consumer market will pick up again in the near future. The result of 1Q22 was PC shipment volumes that were near record levels for a first quarter."

The US Government reinstated over 350 products to a list of exclusions to American import tariffs that were in place in January 2021. This would exclude "printed circuit boards," which is an oversimplified classification of motherboards and graphics cards, along with a range of other PC components that appear like PCBs. The US-China trade-war had caused a curious situation of pre-built computers (such as notebooks, desktops, and workstations) enjoying lower prices than import of their various components. This has had a direct impact on prices of motherboards and graphics cards. Whatever the geopolitical motive behind the move, it should certainly take the pressure off pricing, which have been affected not just by the tariffs, but also component shortages, and spikes in material prices, as well as logistics costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the situation in Eastern Europe.

Intel's Arc discrete lineup of graphics card are set to hit the notebook/laptop segment first, and today's discovery is no different. BHPhotoVideo, one of the largest US tech retailers, has posted a listing of Samsung's Galaxy Book2 Pro laptop, spotting Intel's Arc discrete graphics solution. According to the listing, this model was spotting an undisclosed Intel Arc Graphics, 2.1 GHz 12-core CPU, 16 GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory, 512 GB of NVMe PCIe Gen4 storage, 15.6-inch 1080p AMOLED display, WiFi-6E, and came in just 1.13 KG body weight. All of this is packed at 1349.99 USD, which is an early sign of the structure of laptop prices carrying Intel's Arc GPUs.

BHPhotoVideo has now taken down the website listing; however, we still have evidence thanks to the leaker, which you can see below. For more information regarding the exact SKU and more Arc Alchemist data, we have to wait for the March 30th launch.

This morning, Maybell Quantum unveiled the Icebox, a cryogenic platform to power the next generation of quantum computers. Maybell's Icebox solves several pressing challenges for scaling quantum. Quantum computing is a reinvention of computing. It will perform calculations in seconds that would require billions of years for today's most powerful supercomputers, with profound implications for everything from logistics and agriculture to medicine and climate change. But achieving reliable quantum computation requires qubits - quantum computers' fundamental building block - be in a state where they can be finely manipulated and communicated with through minute signals. Maybell's approach to these challenges has attracted contracts from DARPA, NSIC/DIU, and leading research universities, and is now available to the quantum computing industry.

"Controlling quantum devices at room-temperature is like playing a sonata in a hurricane," explains Corban Tillemann-Dick, Maybell's CEO. "Cooling devices to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, nature's 'speed limit for cold,' calms this chaos to near 'quantum silence' so quantum operations are controllable." Traditional quantum cryogenic systems, however, are tangles of tubes and wires that cover hundreds of square feet and often require months to set up and PhDs to operate. Moreover, to increase capacity, these systems typically become even larger and more complex.

The output value of the world's top 10 foundries in 4Q21 reached US$29.55 billion, or 8.3% growth QoQ, according to TrendForce's research. This is due to the interaction of two major factors. One is limited growth in overall production capacity. At present, the shortage of certain components for TVs and laptops has eased but there are other peripheral materials derived from mature process such as PMIC, Wi-Fi, and MCU that are still in short supply, precipitating continued fully loaded foundry capacity. Second is rising average selling price (ASP). In the fourth quarter, more expensive wafers were produced in succession led by TSMC and foundries continued to adjust their product mix to increase ASP. In terms of changes in this quarter's top 10 ranking, Nexchip overtook incumbent DB Hitek to clinch 10th place.

TrendForce believes that the output value of the world's top ten foundries will maintain a growth trend in 1Q22 but appreciation in ASP will still be the primary driver of said growth. However, since there are fewer first quarter working days in the Greater China Area due to the Lunar New Year holiday and this is the time when some foundries schedule an annual maintenance period, 1Q22 growth rate will be down slightly compared to 4Q21.

At present, the materials with the most development potential are Wide Band Gap (WBG) semiconductors with high power and high frequency characteristics, including silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), which are mainly used in electric vehicles (EV) and the fast charging battery market. TrendForce research estimates, the output value of third generation power semiconductors will grow from US$980 million in 2021 to US$4.71 billion in 2025, with a CAGR of 48%.

SiC is suitable for high-power applications, such as energy storage, wind power, solar energy, EVs, new energy vehicles (NEV) and other industries that utilize highly demanding battery systems. Among these industries, EVs have attracted a great deal of attention from the market. However, most of the power semiconductors used in EVs currently on the market are Si base materials, such as Si IGBT and Si MOSFET. However, as EV battery power systems gradually develop to voltage levels greater than 800 V, compared with Si, SiC will produce better performance in high-voltage systems. SiC is expected to gradually replace part of the Si base design, greatly improve vehicle performance, and optimize vehicle architecture. The SiC power semiconductor market is estimated to reach US$3.39 billion by 2025.

In 4Q21, NAND Flash bit shipments grew by only 3.3% QoQ, a significant decrease from the nearly 10% in 3Q21, according to TrendForce's investigations. ASP fell by nearly 5% and the overall industry posted revenue of US$18.5 billion, a QoQ decrease of 2.1%. This was primarily due to a decline in the purchase demand of various products and a market shift to oversupply causing a drop in contract prices. In 4Q21, with the exception of enterprise SSD, the supply of which was limited by insufficient upstream components, the prices of other NAND Flash products such as eMMC, UFS, and client SSD, all fell.

TrendForce's summary of NAND Flash market sales performance in 2021 is as follows: although there have been signs of weakening since 2H21, thanks to remote services and cloud demand driven by the pandemic, revenue performance still grew significantly compared to 2020. Revenue reached US$68.6 billion, up 21.1% YoY, the second-biggest increase since 2018.

China is reacting to new outbreaks of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus with partial lockdowns. This could further delay the availability of laptops with 12th Gen Intel Core processors and NVIDIA's Ti graphics cards, which debuted at the beginning of the year. The first factories have already been closed in Suzhou in the east of the country. Supply chain and logistics bottlenecks, a shortage of certain chip types and price increases are already on the horizon.